This biography aims to uncover the truth about one of the century's strangest and most mysterious literary rebels. Genet's early life encompassed thieving, the French Foreign Legion and homosexual prostitution. In prison in the 1940s, he began to write. Plays and novels - including "Thief's Journal" and "Our Lady of Flowers" followed. Hailed as a genius, and taken up by the fashionable literary society of post-war Paris, he later espoused the Black Panther movement in America and the Palestinian fight for a homeland. Edmund White examines the motivations behind the extremes in Genet's life and writing. Striving to separate the facts from the myths, and working from assembled letters and interviews, White creates a portrait of an extraordinary man. Edmund White is both novelist and critic, the author of "A Boy's Own Story" and "The Beautiful Room is Empty".
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About the Author
Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940. He teaches at Princeton University. He is an officer of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres.
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Deeply impressive, this book tells the story of Jean Genet from sources that Edmund White garnered from all over France. Known first for his poetry, then novels, then his plays, then his works in criticism, Genet was an anomaly in world literature. He endlessly revised his work, sometimes then withdrawing them after many years of them being read and performed. Mercurial, unhappy, he rarely really lived anywhere, but lived around the world in hotel rooms, having his mail delivered to his publisher. His life peaked early; his novels were well received as modernist works, and his plays were performed world-wide. After that, he repudiated much of what he'd done, and worked for the downtrodden of the world -- the Palestinians, the Black Panthers. It is an oftentimes touching story, although as a person Genet was not much the icon to be admired. White knows that and while admiring the works, the man is thoroughly examined and is lacking in the final analysis.
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